Market Education and Future Growth

You are now listening to the EU Startups Podcast . Hello, and welcome to this episode of the U Startups Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Dave Sennin Garcia, the news editor here at U Startups. If you're termin ating, would you consider crier preservation? That's the question that Emil Kenziora is looking to answer with his startup, Tomorrow. bio. Now, Tomorrow.bio is an interesting company because there really aren't many like it in Europe. In fact, according to him, they're the only one. They're, of course, specialist in cryopreservation for both humans and pets, and uh he was able to chat to me over these thirty or forty minutes that we had the conversation over the uh evolution of the technology within Europe, how they offer what they offer, the intricacies of cost and process, and even the uh forward looking nature of the technology and where he hopes the technology will be in five to ten years from now. Of course I hope you're looking forward to that conversation. 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Join over 8,000 companies, including many Y Combinator and Techstar startups, who trust Vanta Simplify compliance and get one thousand dollars off at vanta.com/slash EU startups. That's V A N T A dot com slash EU startups. Hello, Miel, and welcome to the USTARPS podcast. It's a pleasure to have you on. Happy to be here. Thank you. Yes, uh I I'm very much looking forward to today's uh chat. It's not really uh something that we have very uh mm common here on the podcast, uh cryo preservation startup. It's not really anything that we've uh talked about before. So uh I'm looking forward to this chat with you and uh I'm sure you have a lot to bring. So uh before we get started into the combo, I'll just give you a chance to present yourself, even though I've given a little uh a little sneak peek as to who you are and what you do. Yeah, awesome. Uh I Emile . Um by training I'm a doctor. So I didn't technically start out as an entrepreneur, at least not that very traditional path. So I studied medicine um to go into research. So this was my original plan, right? And research for uh what now is the kind of the longevity field, which now of course has been kind of like a hype hype topic over the last couple of years. Um but then after being in in in in uh in in research and doing cancer research and so on, I got a bit disillusioned with how fast research is or how s how slow more precisely. And um my high school friends went into either into computer science or into into business school. Right. So I had a uh I I then since I didn't know what to do, I started companies with them. I had a had a small company during during med school uh with my high school friends. So it was a really relatively easy jump-off point. Um so we built two companies, one data analysis company and one medtech company, um, but then sold both of them 'cause in the last one in like twenty nineteen or so, I started thinking about okay, now I really wanna I wanna I wanna get back to what I to do what I really want to do, which is this longevity topic. And then um I I left the company at the end of twenty uh at at the end of twenty nineteen. Um and then we sold it in in early twenty twenty . Um and since then I've been running a cryopreservation uh company and and a foundation and like multiple things in that field. Um and as as you as you as as you've mentioned, it's not an absolute standard topic, but it's a it's very much a moonshot for better or for worse. Yes. Well it's it it it definitely is very interesting. It it's it's uh it's obviously what caught my eye and uh what made me interested in having you here in the first place. Uh so I want to get into kind of the uh the beginnings of it all. So you you've kind of mentioned that you you you've always had this drive for uh longev ity and uh kind of innovation in that field. Can you tell me a little bit about why that is? Yeah. Is there a personal reason? What made you want to dedicate yourself to that? Yeah. So the plan was always to start companies. I decided to study medicine and take that path. Um when I was seventeen, maybe someone in that ballpark. I started at the end of eighteen I started studying medicine. So um I made I made that decision and uh the the years prior, I thought about you know what what's the best path to do what I want to do. So my motivation has never changed since since I'm like, you know, I don't know, 17, maybe even 16 or 15, somewhere in that in that relatively early um you know, teenage years. Just the path of how I'm going towards what I wanna what I want to do long term has changed and has you know has adapted over time. But the original goal was always to try to figure out how I and others can live as long as they would like to. So this this has always been my my personal motivation. Um for whatever reason it's not like any my parents are still alive and or no one no one I I didn't have this like, you know, aha moment, at least nothing that I can remember in my in my teenage years where I felt like um you know dying is not a particularly great idea. But for whatever reason I came to that conclusion and I still I still hold that conclusion . I I s I still believe that very much. So um from the early early childhood uh teenage years um I never felt like I I always enjoy I enjoyed life, right? I I would really like to say the f see the future. I I definitely are very excited about what will be possible from a technology standpoint, from a social socioeconomy, economical standpoint, and so on. Um and last but not least, I I strongly, strongly personally prefer being alive to being dead. So Me too. Um and right, most people I think if they think about it, there's very, very few people who say, Hey, I'd rather be dead tomorrow than live another day. Right. And in at least if I predict how I will feel when I'm fifteen and sixty and seventy and eighty and maybe even ninety or a hundred, right? I think it's it's gonna be very unlikely for me that at some point I'm gonna say, hey, I I'd rather I mean if you have crazy amounts of pain, okay, so sure, maybe maybe then you might change your mind. But if everything goes kinda well, I think I will never change my mind. But of course, medically, right, and this was kind of the original kind of you know um the original plan, medically that's not possible. Like you know, and m almost everybody, very, very few people um make it to the age of ninety. The plan originally was to go into med school, do an MD, then kind of during half what once I'm like add on a PhD program, then do an MD PhD program , um and then kind of have the experience to do the basic science part, but also tr the translational science part, how to implement the stuff that you do in um in in basic science, how to implement that into clinical practice, and then build a company around that that actually makes that work. And then offers, you know, the pill, the treatment, you name it, I don't know exactly what, but offers the thing that then lets people live how long they would like to live. That was the original plan. Yeah, and then as I said, like some deviations um over time. Sure. Well it and so you you've mentioned that you've uh you know you you've had experience in other companies, both founding and exiting. Uh according to my notes here, they were med lanes and on feedback, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I I I so I built a me a few more companies. So i I started early um again during med school, but th those were not startups. Those were more like, you know, how how people start out, you know, building web pages later and we did enterprise development, like we did had an outsourcing company. um and so on But these were not startups, more more companies. Um but this was what funded my my first startup. And that that was more on feedback, which was a data analysis company. Okay. So then and and I wanna quote here that your web page because this line kind of really stood out for me. It has to do with what we're talking about here. In in the meet the team section, it says under you, he has no intention of ever starting another company and considers tomorrow.bio his life's work. That's the quote. So you know, why why is it that you see this as your life's work? Because you've had experience building other companies and you, you know, you have a knack, you have an interest. What makes you say, no, this is it. Yeah. So so the other companies they were always stepping stones towards that goal that I just laid out, right? So so my goal is to figure out how to not die. Right. Um which of course uh i I I'm I'm the first to admit that that is not an easy that's not an easy problem, right? Um by by by any means. So the other companies I started because when I when I was in the last year of med school, um now I had an understanding of how how easy or how difficult research is. I've been in research at that point for a few have have been in research for a few years. And unfortunately at that point I was significantly less optimistic than maybe I was when I started out with med school, right? Um or starting out with research. Um it it's just really biology is really, really, really, really hard, right, for a variety of reasons. Right. And um so at that point I didn't find anything where I felt like, okay so this actually has high impact towards that goal that I that I have and or had and still have. So I started those companies not because I was particularly personally super motivated for data analysis . Um but it was a relatively easy point to get into the game, to learn how to build companies, to you know sure build skills and so on. And then the the next one after that, um so that the the first one we sold to question pro in in the US and in Austin and Texas. The second one then we started which was this MetaTech um company or digital health back then was a big topic, right? The telemedicine and and house calls and so on. Um my my my co-founder was a computer scientist. I was a doctor at that point, right? So kind of good connection and we had built companies before together. Um but but again, also a medtech company or like a digital health company is was not necessarily what I wanted to do for a very long time. It just felt at that point like, you know, this will be the next big thing and um that will be something that we can then relatively soon relatively sell sell relatively expensively, which sure medtech you know the the whole field developed significantly slower than we thought back then. Right. So this this uh we still sold it in in twenty twenty, but um not not as uh it was not as big as we thought uh it it it uh the the the field did not develop even remotely as fast as we thought. And so I I then the reason why I'm now saying this is a company that I do not want to sell, right, is because it's this is or has become over the last couple of years, and I've been of course following the longevity field while running these other companies. This is f for around almost ten years now. This is the best bet I see. And for around like six years or so now I'm I'm running this company. And uh of course by now I'm I'm good friends with basically everybody in longevity, like from all the biotech companies in the US and and almost everybody who's who's involved in that field in some capacity. Um I I have not found anything better yet. Anything better towards actually living significantly longer. There's stuff that might make you live healthy. And there's definitely stuff that, you know, where you can might still where you have a higher chance of being able to run a marath on when you're 75 . But there is I have not found anything that has a good chance of making you live longer or allowing you to live longer. So cryout preservation and what I'm doing at tomorrow Bio is the is the best bet in that regard. So um it's not a company that I'm running because I want to sell it off and and make a buck and like whatever. Right. This is a company where I'm I'm interested in the mission and it's a it's a it's a personal intrinsic deep intrinsic motivation to make this company work. To be fair, once that company works and if that company works, it's gonna be really, really big business at the same time. But what I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna do the you know, if someone comes around and offers me fifty million for the company, then I'm gonna say, yeah, thank you. But uh no thanks. Um yeah, so so that that's got that's kind of the difference. Like we're not we're not this is not a company that I want to quickly sell and you know have an exit or whatever. Um this is this is for for all intents and purposes a do or die company, both for for the for the mission and um from a financial Okay. So there's there's a lot of questions I have from everything you've said. And I'm gonna kinda jump the gun on one that I think stands out to me the most, even though I guess it would be jumping forward in the conversation we would naturally get there. But I do want to ask, you know, isn't it all still theory? Because you've said, you know, this is all going to be so big when it works. But how will we know when then if when it works, right? Because you you've cryopreserved uh patients. I'm I I'm imagining terminally ill people. So it there must be so do you have a s a checklist, right? It's like okay, we have advancements in cancer that says it will cure this one. Oh, we have a patient who was uh terminally ill from this. Great. Let's uh let's address this now. You know, i how how in the near future is that w will we be able to see it do you think? So so from a company perspective, there I I would say that currently there are three types of it works. One is from a financial standpoint, right? From a unique economic standpoint, crowd preservation is good to okay to really good business. Right. So once we have, you know, I don't know, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, maybe a hundred thousand people signed up for cryopreservation, it becomes really good business from a from a unique economic standpoint. Right? Okay. So so th for that we technically don't need to even have any b it it doesn't need to work yet as in we can revive anybody, right? And and for those of you who might not be super deep in cryopreservation, the idea of cryopreservation is basically that stuff that you know from science fiction movies, right? Where if you want to fly to another star, you freeze down, even though it's not freezing, you put them into cryostas is, right? And then you wake them up once you reached another star. In our world, of course, here this is not for space travel prime space travel primarily, even though this might be a use case down the line. It's more so if people, you know, when you're forty or fifty you get terminal cancer, the doctors tell you you have six months to live and then you can choose either you want to be cremated or buried or you want to be cryopreserved. Right. And then more and more people say I would rather be cryopreserved for the chance that medical technology in the future has advanced enough to be able to cure the cancer and to reverse the process so I can live on. Right. So so that just as a short uh side note. The second it works is once it starts working on animals. Right. So if once we can start once we can you know trial preserve a rat or a mouse. Like you know, that's normally how biotech research is being done, right? You do the research in mice and at some point it works, and then you go into clinical trials. At that point, it would probably be big business in regards that investors who join early can do good secondaries. We would still not sell the company at that point. But at that point, once you can do this in mice , cryopreservation has the unique advantage against uh uh other biotech companies that if it works in ripe rats or mice, it it's probably very easy to scale it up to humans at that point. So very easy, you know, in in in relative terms. So um but once once that works, you you could probably have good secondary opportunities. And then really works mean means you can put someone into cryostasis and you can resuscitate, revive them from cryostasis. To be fair, that might be decades out. Right? And I'm not making claims if it's like two decades or eight decades. This might be this might this is this is not easy. This is by by any means this is this is very difficult. Um we we usually have investors invested in us who have a significantly longer, you know, investment horizon than the typical VC funds. So it's more like family offices, evergreen funds, ultra high net worth people, billionaires and so on. Yeah. Um so um but but these are the kind of the three steps how it works. Financially if a lot of people sign up from a biotech standpoint and from a traditional biotech kind of how how uh projects progress, if you can do it in in rats or mice. And then in humans, humans would be of course the holy grail. Um and then, you know, what once you can bring people back from the debt, um, you know, um it's gonna be probably a trillion dollar company at that point. Because then you literally revive someone, right? But again, I may I'm making no claim of if that's gonna be, you know, anytime soon. Okay. And what uh what kind of uh assurances are there that you can give to customers in terms of uh so uh 'cause 'cause you know, I the reason why I heard about you was it was last year five million that you raised and and I covered and I said, Oh it,'s such an interesting company. We should maybe think about. So you're obviously getting funding, right? And uh in terms of uh people that are uh I have here twenty cryo preserved patients. I don't know if that uh statistics. Now it's like thirty something, but but yes, like it's not like hundreds yet, but it's right. Like so it's it's more than a thousand people signed up now. Yeah, right? Each crier preservation is two hundred thousand euros, so that's that's you know, a bit north of uh two hundred million in contract volume. Um and then in Okay. So so then what kind of uh guarantees do you have to these people, right? Because uh you are a company and uh you know, God forbid, maybe uh a a bus and uh you don't get enough funding or whatever you can't convince people to sign up, whatever the reason, what guarantees are there to somebody who's going to be cryopreserved within your uh facilities or organization? Yeah. So all people who are in long-term cryostasis with us, they're legally not with the company anymore. They're with a nonprofit foundation in Switzerland. And there's like a foundation structure with an asset management foundation um and uh a non profit foundation um which which I also started so I'm on the board of both of them. So it's not like a random European biostasis foundation. Yeah one is the European Biostasis Foundation, the other called is called the Patient Care Foundation. So these are these are custom designed foundations for the purpose of keeping people in cryostasis long term. So legally , these are or one of those, the patient care foundation is the legal guardian over the people who are in cryostasis. Nevertheless , cryostase, cryopreservation is not a guarantee. It's neither a guarantee from a from a you know from a medical standpoint. Currently you cannot revive someone from crostasis, right? It's impossible to do that. It it relies on future technology. It is of course possible that, you know, whatever if if if you know, there's like nuclear war in the future, right? Who knows if then if the facility in Switzerland and all of that stays around, right? So I think if you think about crowd preservation as a guarantee, that's that's kind of the the wrong approach to take it. So I think the better approach to think about this is depending on your personal worldview, and definitely my personal worldview and philosophy, if I'm being cremated or buried , there is no coming back from that. The chance to be revived and brought back from cremation is zero. Or at least as close as you can be to zero, right? The theoretical zero. Right. At the very least, chrier preservation gives you a better chance. Right. And now it's and I can't tell you how high that chance is, but I'm very happy to defend that it's better. And my job is now to stack your the the deck in your favor with research, with better governance, with like checks and balances, with like with you know prudent long-term financial planning. So by and large, it is stacking the deck in your favor, but not a guarantee. Because again, you you cannot currently guarantee guarantee it because of course I do not know you know how the world will look in 20 years, in thirty years, in fifty years, maybe in a hundred years. Um but the chance is better. Like basically you it it's the question, like you know, you have a terminal disease, right? And someone comes to you and says, Hey, I have this new clinical trial that might give you a chance. Right? And now you can say, Do you want to be in the placebo group or do you want to be in the intervention group? Do you want to be the control group or do you want to be the intervention group? Like another another example that is sometimes being used, right, is you know on a plane and the plane is crashing. Like it is is definitely hitting the ground. You know, someone comes to you and says, listen, hey, I have this very experimental parachute here. Has never been work, has never been tried. We don't know. Right? But but do you want one? And then I'm I'm definitely taking one . Right. So so so it's it's more so again depending on personal worldview. Do you wanna go for clear doom or do you wanna do you wanna you know take the chance? I think and and then again So whole body preservation for members is two hundred thousand, just brain is seventy-five and the non-members is a hundred uh no two hundred and thirty thousand and then a hundred and fifteen thousand for brain for non-members. Uh so uh that that's an obvious wealth barrier, of course. Uh you know, and it's understandable. It's it's a it's a new technology, it's an experimental technology. Uh would you want to see if all of a sudden it becomes a trillion darn company like you're saying? Would you want this kind of uh expanded and that wealth gap kind of reduced? Absolutely. In effect it's one of the three goals of the company. So um we have we have three goals. Making crowd preservation better from a quality standpoint, making it more accessible and making it more affordable. So the luckily, all the costs of cryopreservation are they scale down with the economy of scale tremendously. The the the problem of why cryopreservation is currently so expensive is because it's you know there's more super yachts in the world than people signed up for cryopreservation. So it is currently, you know, if you want to be on the absolute forefront of you know the avant-garde of uh of you know the bleeding edges of technology, then just get a cryopolitic contract. Um so it is it's very few people currently decide for cryostasis because it's a relatively new topic, it's not many people know about it, not people many know not many people know that it actually can be done and so on and so on. So um nevertheless, the cost can go down once more people do it to at least somewhere in the you know 25,000 range. Initially, we started out just doing whole body cryopreservation. We added on brain cryopreservation, even though we would always recommend whole body. We added on brain cryopreservation because it is currently the only way how we can make it significantly more affordable without jeopardizing quality. Nevertheless, down the line, my hope would be that we can offer this significantly more affordable. And the three main costs that we have, which is equipment and cryoprotective agents, long-term storage and personnel, all of that goes down significantly once more people do it. Because currently I have medical teams, you know, doctors, perfusionists and so on. I have them standing around for like I don't know, three hundred days a year in quotation marks and they just keep up and train and whatever, right? Because not so many people do it. And of course if, you can split that cost um over more people, cost would go down. Same for liquid nitrogen consumption. It's basically a factor of how much surface area do you have to volume. And if you increase you know, the the location where the these these um these low temperature storage is being done. Um you know the the the the the consumption goes down by surface area but volume then allows you to store much, much more and you have less consumption. So long term you can offer this much, much more affordable. Um currently it is still relatively expensive. Nevertheless, it's also important for me to say that people don't pay, usually at least, they don't pay that that money out of pocket . We work with large life insurance providers. So in in almost all cases, people take out life insurance and then we are the beneficiary of that life insurance policy. Right? And so you can c you can fund cryopreservation in that way. Okay. And what's the what's the benefit of only cryopreserving your brain? Is that also for some future technology where you could input a brain into a a robot or a humanoid. What what's the what's the idea there? Pretty much. I mean I again like I I I try to never make any definitive statements about the far future because like what do I know, right? Like what's going to be possible in fifty years. But the fundamental the logic here is that as much as we currently understand, everything that we value personality, identity , consciousness, everything that makes me me and makes you you, right, is is in our brains. We we ran a we ran a big study a while ago where we asked like a lot of neuroscientists and the overwhelming majority is like yes, that that's the case. So and and of course we kind of know this. Like you know, hearts can be transplanted, lungs can be transplanted. You can switch out a lot of the body parts, whereas the brain just conceptually you can't switch it out. So as long as you have the brain, for all intents and purposes, you have the parts that are unique . And now at least it is imaginable that in the future you will be able to 3D print organs and and potentially the rest of the body. Right? Again, I strongly would suggest whole body. Like the only reason why we do brain is to give people an option if they would say, I cannot afford whole body. The choice is basically I don't do anything. I go cremation or burial or I do brain only. I think in that case it makes a lot of sense to do brain only because at least conceptually we have ideas how you know how a body could be 3D printed. That's not gonna be super soon, but once you have enough time. Um I I I'm I'm not seeing any fundamental reason why this should not be possible at some point. And the the trick of course with cryopreservation is once you're at these cryogenic temperatures, time doesn't matter anymore. You can wait, you know, if it's ten years, fine. If you need to wait fifty, that's also okay. If it takes 200, no worms. In theory you can stay in that temperature at cryogen ic temperatures for thousands and thousands of years. Nothing happens. So you can just wait it out until future technology has caught up. Nevertheless, we would always recommend whole body. Okay. Well, uh previously you mentioned that uh you you're involved in founding the uh European biostasis uh foundation and and all these initiatives within Europe. I know that I previously read that you used to be signed up with the American offering, which is uh Alcor. Yes. So so why did you see the need for a European version if if you already felt that there was an American one and it seemed to be interesting enough for you to initially be involved with it . There are two main reasons for that. So I I mean I was just their customer, right? So I was not really like super involved. I was just their customer. But uh nevertheless, uh crowd preservation is like um it's not an easy topic, right? It's uh I I could I could make way more money somewhere else. So so so it is it is a bit of uh like you know why. Um so there's there's two main reasons. One is cryopreservation from a from a medical infrastructure standpoint, it needs to be done quickly. If something would happen to me right now here in Europe, um I stump at some point once I still signed up with them, I asked them like, how like, listen, how does this work? Like um and the answers were kind of like yeah, don't worry about it. And and at some point I felt like there's definitely something to worry about. In fact, they don't have medical teams in Europe. Right? So there's no way of them being able to do that procedure quickl That's one reason. And by now, of course, I know them much, much closer. So all the other crier preservation organizations that are relevant in the world. They have been around for fifty plus years. So this is not a new topic by any means . And I I think the best way to kind of think about it is, you know, um i tax is have been around for a very long time before Uber came around. And now technically you could say, well, Uber taxis, you know, same thing, same value proposition, what's the difference? But then again, I don't remember when I used the taxi last. And I think a lot of people who are more a bit more app-based and whatever, there is there is a significant difference in the experience. And by now, there's also significant at least in our case, by now there's a significant difference in the quality of preservation. So we do much, much more quality checks um and on average so show and both the top and on average we show much better quality um than other organiz ations do. Um so by by now I I I like I I don't think like these legacy organizations, you know like I I don't to be fair, I don't even really consider them a competitor anymore. Like we grow twenty times faster than they do. They have a fifty a head start, you know, but um from a from a growth trajectory, from a quality standpoint, from a growth rate, from a from a satisfaction rate, i it's it's not the same it's not the same ballpark anymore. Like who who gro like to like to like again, we grow we we have um significantly better quality, we grow twenty times faster than they do. Um and so on. So I think um my my my decision was mostly personally was more so um accessibility of medical teams and quality of preservation why I felt like maybe there needs to be a new player in the field. Because you know, w when I when I first came across the story, it just seemed like you know Walt Disney uh atomic gauge thing where it's you know it's like it's absurd really. No, I I don't think even Walt Disney is even cryopreserved. I think this is actually no I I don't think like we we had a blog post in the very beginning on our blog and this was the most clicked webpage on all of everything. But I I think it's it's purely as far as I know, I mean maybe there's some secret whatever under Disneyland or whatever. But um I think that's it it's an urban legend. But but of course you're right. Like um this cry preservation was always this topic on the edge between science fiction and science. Like and and um we have now moved it and also sometimes like a con at least in the past, contentiously discussed. Right. And and um now , you know, like since we've been around and some new organizations starting up, it has been moved significantly more into this is an option that people can seriously consider and then make up their mind if this is something they want to do. And some people might say, No, this is not something what that that I want to do. And that's of course also totally fine. But then other people might say , Well, why not? Right? This is not something you do early. You do it once all the other medical interventions have failed. Right? No one needs to say tomorrow I want to be cryo-preserved. No, you try everything else, and then only once the doctors say we have tried everything, your cancer is still incurable. And then in fact the people ha the doctors have pronounced you like that, then we immediately take over. Right. So uh and then again for a lot of people, even though two hundred K is a a good chunk of money for a significant part of population, if they really want to do it, they're able to fund it. Um and then it only comes down if to to if this is something you want to do. Okay. Uh and uh well we're on the topic here of uh uh Europe and uh you know the way of moving that forward within this continent. I had a quick look. Obviously I, can't really compare you to any other company. Usually there's podcasts, I could say I could say, oh, well, there's these other companies, and how do you feel about the competition? I can't really ask you that here. But what I can ask you, and I I I think it's important , is that well, for some background, we tracked in terms of uh kind of health optimization companies, which is I guess the broader umbrella I can I can fit you in. Uh we tracked in this past year, we've seen around thirty-four million euros come and go in terms of funding for these kinds of uh uh initiatives. So does being one of these select few companies that do what you do, does that is that a plus for you? Or would you like to see more companies kind of enter the landscape and enter the broader European Biostasis Foundation? Yeah, no no no question. So we would like uh so so so we don't have a competitor problem, right? In fact there's zero companies that we are aware of in y all of Europe that do what we do. There's worldwide a couple new ones starting out. Um but but it but it's it's so so our problem is not competition. Our problem is market education and and you know market penetration and all of that. So I would I would have a strong preference for a couple of organizations that would start in that field, right? That would help the whole field, that would build the field, that would make it uh more serious and so on. In fact we're supporting a couple of smaller companies, right? I've invested in like I I usually don't do angel tickets. I'd rather start companies, which I do sometimes on the weekend on the side, but um I I of course don't run them. Um but um yeah you know like I I would definitely like to have more companies in that in that space. Um currently you know um and and and from a from a from an so so since we're of course if you if you take longevity because you said health optimization field right is uh longevity has become a very very broad spectrum right from from supplements to skin lotions to bio or towards biotech and then somewhere on the other side of the spectrum, that's where we are. Right. So so we're we're very much so usually when we meet investors and the con the conversation is either I'm in or I'm out. This is not like, yeah, you know, but who's the competition and and whatever, right? It's it's more almost a binary decision. This is something I want to do. This is something I feel like is cool. Um, I might even want to do it myself, right? Or I'm definitely want to do it myself. Uh and then I mean. Um un unfortunately yeah, our competitor slide is not it's not an extensive slide and it's uh there there isn't unfortunate there isn't much. So then is there kind of uh niche areas that maybe you'd like to see more explored within kind of, you know, cryopreservation? I mean, 'cause the pets thing stood out to me. That was interesting because I saw yet and again them these might be old numbers, but uh ten pets cryopreserved So is there maybe a lot of people. We started sorry, the other way around. We started with humans and then moved to pets. There is one organization that there is a a a meaningful startup in the US that does pet cryoposition, pure pet cryoposition. Um but but good friends of us, so we'll collaborate them with them on a on a variety of topics. Um the so you could so there is there's a good amount of angles that you can take in cryopreservation. You can you can take the organ biobanking angle, right, make organs available or or research how to cryopreserve organs so that you can make organs avail able um for transplantation. Right. It's of course a bit of a different biotech play, but um might be very interesting. Right. You can take the pet angle, go for pets, and of course there's a lot of people who after having lived with their pet for ten or fifteen years, they consider that pet part of the family. Right? And um so so they might consider cryopreservation. Um the human cryopreservation angle for argument's sake is probably the most difficult one. Um but at least for me it's also the most exciting one. Um you can also take an angle that comes from cells, like you know just doing cell cryo preservation. Um all of which we will only do like if if our research teams find something interesting, we would always try to spin that out as a separate company. So we're f um we're hardcore, mission aligned, moonshot, missionri-vend organization. We would not we would not pivot. So we tell all of our investors, listen, we're not pivoting. Like if I'm sitting around here in a few years with like two people on the team because no one wants to invest in this organization for whatever reason because now it's not a high not a cool topic anymore, so be it. I sit around with those two people and wait out until we we can raise more money or whatever. Right? So um but we if we find something interesting that is kind of adjacent, we would spin it out. Um all of these fields, if something if someone would wanna found something, I would I would be very excited. Okay. I have to ask then if if if you were faced with a terminal illness, would you uh sign up for what what what you're offering here would that be something you're interested in not not without a second thought okay like it's not even a question for me like like my worldview like you know in in my I I I die, right, I'm I'm I I do not have any evidence to the to to to believe that there's anything but nothing. Right. And again, I I do enjoy living much more than I would enjoy being dead. Um and I definitely want to see tomorrow. And I definitely want to see in ten years and maybe also in a hundred years, right? At least I want to always have the optionality to say I would like to live another day. And if I'm being diagnosed with a terminal condition it is currently incurable and inevitably will lead to my death. Um I I think it's it's it's you know the the it's it's a binary choice. Do you want to be cremated or buried or do you wanna be cryopreserved? You need to, unfortunately, you need to choose one of those two things. Yeah. Right? And my choice is is one hundred percent clear. I will always get cryopreservation before I go go for cremation. Right. And um and yeah, I mean otherwise to be fair, I wouldn't run this organization. Again, there there would be more money to be made somewhere else. It would be easier somewhere else and so on. So I think there' theres's a a good amount of intrinsic motivation required if you wanna do uh if you well if you wanna do startups in the first place, but then especially if you want to do a startup that is a company that is in in kind of one of these more moonshotty uh fields. Okay. Well I uh we're approaching the final question here and then I'll I'll let you go to uh to to do what you do best. Uh and uh it's I uh we've talked so much here about it kind of being uh a little bit on the fringe of every of uh of kind of you know, medical science and how uh w you want to work towards pushing that more to the center and getting more people to know about it, get more people to sign up. In your opinion, what needs to happen on that level? Is it just more people knowing about it? Or does there need to be certain uh medical milestones that need to be reached for this to be seriously taken as a serious option. Yeah. So so by the way, everything that's interesting is slightly on the on on the end of the spectrum, right? The moonshots, I would not want to run normal companies anymore.. Right I want to do stuff that is is is pushing you know boundaries in a positive sense. The moonshot, the stuff that really would have would have high impact. Um so it it's it's a combination. So to get to let's say a hundred thousand or so people signed up, right? If a hundred thousand people pay you two hundred thousand euros, you know, it's already good business at that point, right? And and fifty bucks a month as a subscription fee in addition. Um so to get there to there, to that point, it's probably only figuring out how to communicate this topic in a way where more people say, I want to do this now. Because when when you ask people, we we ran like large studies and of course studies always need to be taken with a grain of salt. But around twenty percent of population in Europe and in the US says this is my end of life choice. Given the options, I'd rather do this than the alternatives. Of course, 20% of population is you know it's it's way above the 100k people that I just mentioned. So um to go significantly higher, and this is of course why we also do research, is um if you can show it that it works in mice, that you have more more data and so on, probably helps, even though uh unfortunately I think usually most people don't make decisions that much on you know what does the scientific literature literature say? So I think it's more a communication. Then it's it's kind of like a bit of you know everything. Like one once it becomes it's a self fulfilling thing or like a flywheel kind of thing. Once there's more data, more people think about it, more people talk about it, there's more key opinion leaders from research and medicine that that are involved in it. Like, you know, then the first I think Paris Hilton said that she definitely wants to sign up for cryopreservation. Right. We'll have her on next then. Um no, like once once more of of of that group of people than you know um uh celebrities and stars sign up uh and then it kind of gets this flywheel where more people say listen why not like what's what's the downside? I mean the downside is you pay two hundred thousand euros but apart from that you know if it doesn't work nothing you you you don't have any disadvantage and if it works and you would like to see the future then you definitely have a big ad big advantage. So in my mind it's um yeah every day of the week I would rather do cryo preservation than cremation. Got it. Well thank you very much, Emile. It's been a pleasure to have you on. I c I could keep chatting. Uh I I I want I want to I want to give my video editor uh I I don't want to make his day bad by turning into two hours agreeing at the same time. No, no, no. I do I I am quite enjoying the conversation. There's so much to chat about and uh I'm sure we're gonna be seeing more of you. Uh you know you've you've uh you're you're raising funding, you did so good last year, and we'll be looking forward to uh any new advancements from you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me.